Long time no blog. Lotta work this past week, then went out to Denver to meet with the company I’ll be interning with this summer, NewsGator.

Which brings us to the trifecta of topics for today- 3x the fun in a post of one. Topics of the day: Work, Network, Shop. Or, more specifically, three awesome companies/apps/things.

NewsGator: I’m psyched to be working for these guys this summer. The company was great, everyone seemed cool, and the product/services are interesting. The work I’ll be doing should be fun and challenging, and my boss is really great (I get extra credit for saying that, right Walker?). Working in Denver will be a blast, and my in-laws place in Boulder (where I’ll be staying) is amazing. Looking like a great summer already. If you use the iPhone, download NewsGator’s “netnewswire” app (yes, it’s free!). If you’re looking for a good desktop RSS reader that can integrate with your Google reader and subscriptions, check out FeedDemon:

Gist: Enough about work. Walker showed me a program called Gist and it’s pretty cool. The premise is simple: Know More About Who You Know. The program pulls contacts from Outlook, Gmail, LinkedIn- or even a list you create in Exel- and then builds a contact info database for you to use. Not only does it search the web for information on them (news stories, etc.), but also pulls feeds from social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). When you click on a contact’s name, you can see all public news, social media feeds, previous email correspondence, calendar appointments you have with them, etc. I’m still figuring out the setup, but I can already see how useful this could be. Due to the heavy amount of data it’s pulling, it can sometimes be a little slow-that’s my only complaint.

Jasmere: A friend put me in contact with a cool DC entrepreneur last week, just for a fun discussion. He’s created a website that uses economies of scale to help consumers purchase goods at a lower cost. They identify quality vendors that don’t have the budget to advertise, and negotiate a discount with those vendors. You go to their site, and see what that day’s offering is, and how long you have left to get in on the deal. Once you sign-up for the deal, your credit card is NOT charged yet, but you have committed to the purchase. Then, the more people that purchase, the lower the price goes! So if you sign up when the price is at $14, that’ s the most you would pay, but if 10 other people sign up and the price drops to $10, you pay $10, not $14. Very cool site, very cool guy with a lot of great experience.

Advertisements

Why the Name?

“Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.” ~ Nolan Bushnell